For a 12 months and a part now, Google’s semi-official technique for messaging apps has been a three-legged stool: Allo for shopper chat, Hangouts for company chat, and excellent ol’ SMS for texting (with RCS in the long term). None of the ones methods have been ever in reality going to problem the avid gamers who're main the messaging app area: WhatsApp, iMessage, Facebook Messenger.

It’s conceivable, then again, that the closing leg of that messaging stool is set to get much more attention-grabbing. Android Police simply dug into the code for the very newest model of Android Messages, the app Google makes for SMS. And within it are references to 2 very intriguing options.

The first is beautiful simple and, one hopes, simple to put into effect: you may be capable of simply ship text messages from your pc soon. Just as you can with Allo and WhatsApp, it sounds as if as even though you’ll be capable of move to a webpage, scan a QR code, and feature it get hooked up as much as your telephone as an more uncomplicated strategy to ship texts. Android Police discovered code that signifies more than one browsers will probably be supported and, if truth be told, more than one computer systems may even be supported.

That’s all neatly and excellent — it looks after an opening that Android customers have had to make use of third-party merchandise to fill for a very long time. It’s additionally no longer tremendous attention-grabbing as a result of, neatly, SMS itself isn't tremendous attention-grabbing. Even paired with MMS, it doesn’t be offering any of the options you be expecting from a contemporary texting app.

You must in any case have a chic option to text from your pc soon

Which is the place RCS, or Rich Communication Services, is available in. Android Messages has all the time been Google’s RCS app, however so far RCS as an ordinary has finished what you be expecting requirements to do: get misplaced in the shuffle as other corporations both forget about it or put into effect it in step with their very own company whims.

RCS takes SMS and provides it a few of the options you’d need: upper answer photographs, learn receipts, and typing signs, amongst others. But its adoption has been depending on carriers imposing it and making it suitable, which is one among the causes it hasn’t long gone anyplace.

That’s why Android Police’s glance within the new Android Messages app Android Police is so intriguing. They discovered code for a pop-up that reads “New! Text over Wi-Fi and data,” which is as as regards to a layman’s description of RCS as you’ll ever to find. But the in reality intriguing line is available in the high-quality print: “Chat features are powered by Google. By continuing, you accept the %1$s.”

Is Google in any case going to do the proper factor with messaging?

See, like several trendy messaging app, RCS in reality must be supported through a cloud-based infrastructure to paintings. Which ends up in one among 4 chances for the code Android Police discovered:

Nothing to look right here. This code is a lark and can come to not anything.

This is a function for Google’s personal provider, Project Fi, and that is simply the code essential to activate RCS for Fi customers.

Google is solely beefing up the RCS features within Android Messages, and if a provider needs to provide RCS however doesn’t need to handle the essential infrastructure, Google will maintain it.

Google has in any case threaded the not possible messaging needle: created a contemporary messaging platform powered through Google services and products that received’t piss off the carriers an excessive amount of, such that it might unlock a messaging app that may do for Android what iMessage does for iPhones: seamlessly supplant SMS.

Given the many, a few years we’ve watched Google fail to execute on a messaging technique that takes benefit of Android’s international dominance, that closing possibility is most definitely an excessive amount of to pray for. Then once more, it’s been a 12 months and a part since the corporate introduced a significant exchange in its messaging app technique, so we’re most definitely due for any other pivot.

We’ve reached out to Google for remark and can replace if we listen again.